The bottom of the metaphorical barrel

On occasion I think to myself, "why don't I hop on over to craigslist and see what's happening on the local boards?" Why I do this remains to be determined because, quite frankly, every time I do I regret it. I can't say whether this reflects worse upon craigslist posters or myself however, so rather than simply pointing a finger at the disembodied internet and blowing impertinent raspberries at you all, I must hang my head in shame and confess that despite my distaste for most of you I am, in fact, one of you.

Don't get too carried away, that's probably the largest concession you'll get out of me tonight.

Let me start by saying that yes, I'm glad you got online to tell me precisely how much you hate this town. Your racial/religious/homophobic hyperbole illustrates your compelling argument with bold, decisive strokes, and I'm ever-so-excited to hear the same handful of fuckwits call each other increasingly outrageous epithets in an effort to exert a laughable quasi-dominance over each other. It's charming.

Just for once, I want to hear something fresh and original, like "Gosh, it's so nice living here. Everyone treats you like a deserving human being, it's easy to meet people, there's plenty to do after school/work/day camp, and the air is always fresh and the weather great. Don't you all agree?" Sure it'd be a steaming pile of lies, complete with flies buzzing overhead, but at least it would be different from what I normally get to read.

Sit down, internet, I'm not through with you.

I'm not even entirely sure why I'm writing this, since I'm already half-convinced that the internet is inhabited by myself and a million clamouring bots, each with one dial set to "complain-whine-bitch" and the other dial set to "11".

I suppose in the end it's only perfectly human to abandon all pretense of civilization in an environment of complete anonymity coupled with an ostensibly large audience. At that point, the only thing left to making this a perfect storm of human shittiness is to add alcohol and a limited supply of attractive women and then we'd have completely made our merry little way from empathic human beings to howling, feces-flinging baboons. I suppose in this regard the internet acts as its own safeguard against this, as an enormous portion of it is dedicated entirely to ensuring that there is no shortage of attractive women eagerly begging to take their clothes off. We all know what a sticky fountain of pornography the internet is.

Getting back on track.

Of course, not all of you are caught up in the digital dick-measuring of the rest of the craigslist posters. Some of you have enough decency to try to communicate without resorting to sodomy jokes, and you're the only reason I keep coming back I think. If craigslist were only an unadulterated stream of never-ending asshattery, I could safely avoid it without regret. As it stands however, there is the occasional gem of clearly thought, at least semi-intelligible commentary hidden within muck so deep I should be wearing waders, and you know what I have to say to that? Fuck you. If not for you assholes, I'd never have come back to this shrieking cacophony of juvenile twattery. So please, at your earliest convenience fall in a well and die. I'd consider it a favor.

As for the rest of you? Carry on.

Episode 1: Why the hell are you reading this?

Once upon a time, the internet was a vast, unsullied wonderland populated with magical creatures like dragons, unicorns, talking porpoises and courteous humans. The prophets of the time saw a shining future where like-minded intelligences could meet, stripped of all qualifiers of wealth, social status or education, to discuss and solve the Deep Problems of humanity, ending poverty, starvation, disease, warfare and lime green polyester suits once and for all. In the little more than a decade following this mythical golden age, human nature has systematically stripped the Internet of all such promise, leaving it a grim wasteland of pornography, scam sites and lolcats.

Within this squalid mire of degeneracy, one can hardly follow three different links without tripping over one sort of review or another, be they for video games, movies, music or whatever else happens to tickle the reviewer's fancy. In some cases, it's quite apparent that the reviewer's "fancy" hasn't been tickled in far too long, and the resulting outpouring of unwanted opinion can easily be summarized by the phrase "please love me".

I, however, have no such human frailties, and being the snappily-dressed stallion of a misanthrope that I am have decided to begin a review blog. "But Frostout," I hear you say, "how can you ever do such a thing without becoming the very thing you hate?"

Quite simply, you see: I already hate everything, and I may as well add myself to that list.

And so we come to the true purpose of this blog. You see, I Hate Your Stupid Planet, and I desperately want you to know it, and so I plan to do so by reviewing every fucking aspect of life on it with as much bitter vitriol as is safe outside of controlled laboratory conditions.